Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Good And Bad? I Define These Terms Quite Clear, No Doubt, Somehow: "My Back Pages"

I think there is a certain kind of person for whom life really begins once we realize how young we actually are.

When I was in high school my friends put on a very passionate and well-thought-through production of a play called This Is Our Youth, and though I remember little of the plot now (I think there are disaffected rich kids in New York and possibly a drug problem possibly with cocaine?), that phrase stuck in my head: this is our youth.

Depending on how where you put the emPHAsis it can be somewhat disbelieving:

this is our youth??

this is our youth??

or it could be triumphant, bold and honest, brave and just generally accepting that "play the hand you're dealt" is good advice all around:

THIS is our youth!

But no matter how you slice it syntactically, our youth this unequivocally is and I think we should all do what we can to accept that while, as a generation, we've known pretty much nothing but the constant threat of some kind of impending doom--

(do you remember where you were when Y2K did NOT happen? I had just turned thirteen. do you remember where you were when you found out about 9/11? I was at my locker getting my eighth-grade science textbook. if you had to guess, where will you be when the 2012 apocalypse occurs? I'll probably be in my bed watching something stupid on Netflix!)

--we don't have to drown in our own fear of the unknown, the inevitable, the apocalypse, the world of adulthood. We can take a Prince approach to the subject, and I personally think we should, because this is IT.

About Me

My credentials:
1) I have a college degree in something that allowed me to write papers about movies on a fairly regular basis.
2) I can name and sing at least two songs by Tommy James and the Shondells.
3) I never walk with so much purpose as when I'm listening to pop music at a volume that sort of hurts.